Wedding Business Solutions

How do you sell a new product or service, without photos or reviews?

• Alan Berg, CSP, Global Speaking Fellow

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How do you sell a new product or service, without photos or reviews?

Are you struggling to gain traction with a new product or service due to a lack of reviews? How can you effectively communicate your value without prior customer feedback? In this episode, I discuss strategies like showcasing your work through compelling visuals, leveraging peer feedback, and communicating the unique results you bring to potential clients.

Listen to this new 5-minute episode for insights on building momentum for your new offerings, even when you’re starting from scratch.

Episode Summary: 
In this episode of the Wedding Business Solutions podcast, I tackle the challenge of selling a new product or service without any reviews – that classic "chicken and egg" problem. I share some strategies to get past this hurdle, such as creating compelling visuals through styled photo shoots and leveraging peer reviews from industry collaborators. I stress focusing on the results you can provide, which are more impactful than just detailing your products or services. It’s essential to share your unique experience and story to stand out. I also suggest using platforms like Google, Facebook, and Yelp to gather early reviews and testimonials — even from guests and peers. Lastly, I emphasize using concise testimonial snippets in your marketing efforts. Whether you're starting fresh or looking to boost your current strategy, I offer practical insights to help you build momentum in your business.


If you have any questions about anything in this, or any of my podcasts, or have a suggestion for a topic or guest, please reach out directly to me at Alan@WeddingBusinessSolutions.com or visit my website Podcast.AlanBerg.com 

Please be sure to subscribe to this podcast and leave a review (thanks, it really does make a difference). If you want to get notifications of new episodes and upcoming workshops and webinars, you can sign up at www.ConnectWithAlanBerg.com  

View the full transcript on Alan’s site: https://alanberg.com/blog/


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I'm Alan Berg. Thanks for listening. If you have any questions about this or if you'd like to suggest other topics for "The Wedding Business Solutions Podcast" please let me know. My email is Alan@WeddingBusinessSolutions.com. Look forward to seeing you on the next episode. Thanks.

Listen to this and all episodes on Apple Podcast, YouTube or your favorite app/site:

©2025 Wedding Business Solutions LLC & AlanBerg.com

How do you sell a new product or service without any reviews? Listen to this episode, get some ideas. Hi, it's Alan Berg. Welcome back to another episode of the Wedding Business Solutions podcast. This one came in as a ask me anything on if you go to podcast.alanberg.com There is a link there where you can ask me anything or it might come in on Facebook Messenger. Sometimes I get them there as well. So the question was, how do you sell a new product or service when you don't have any reviews yet? Well, it's the age old problem, right? It's the chicken and egg. You need to have sales in order to get reviews. You don't have any reviews because you don't have any sales.

And this goes kind of, kind of in a circle over there. So the question would be here, what do you do? Well, you do what every new product can do, which is you take great images. If you need to do photo shoots to show what the results could look like. So depending upon your product or service, can you a photo shoot, a style shoot, sometimes they call it, if you, if the decor is involved where you get together with other wedding and event professionals and set up an event as it so it looks like a real event, take real photos. You might have people that are dressed up as wedding couples and take out, go, if you're a venue, go out to all of the places where they're going to take pictures and show what it could look like. And then sometimes you need to do work either pro bono, so either do it cheap or free so that you can get those reviews from people who are experiencing what you do. The other thing is if you've done a little bit of work, you do have other people you've worked with in the industry, you can get peer reviews. So that's another way to do it.

So if you've done work and there's a photographer or entertainment or florist or decor or whoever that you've worked with, right, you can do that. Or if you do a style shoot, you work with them, show them what you can do by doing, actually doing it. You could have peer reviews on that as well. Short of that, you need to talk about what you can do for people. And this is something that everybody needs to do. But as a new business, you want to make sure you're starting out with this, which is talk about results, not just products and services. Right? You can't certainly can say that your work is better than anybody else's. And if you've heard me talk about this Nobody should say, our work is better, our work is different, and you want our results, you pay for us.

So if don't put anybody else down, but talk about what's unique about what you're doing. Why did you start your business and how is that going to help the customer? Right? What is your experience and how did that help you get to a result that they're going to want? So these are things that you can do. And then as you go get reviews, you can do it. Now, certain sites, anybody can post a review. So once you get that first event under your belt, not only the person that hired you can post on Google, but also guests could post there and peers can post their sites like Wedding Wire and the Knot. It has to be the person that hired you. So typically it's going to be the couple that hired you. They're able to post, not guests and not bridal party and things like that.

But you can do this on Google, you can do it on Facebook, you can do it on Yelp, you can do it on TripAdvisor, if that's one for you, where anybody that was involved in that event could, could be posting for you. So this way you can get some volume. Even if you don't have that many events, you can get more people to do that. So these are just a couple of ideas there. Photos, of course, are really important because people look at the photos first. Could you make video? Could you have short videos of you talking about the results you can provide for people? And then as you get work, you can get video testimonials to kind of feed in with that as well. But, you know, showing your personality and showing that you're talking to them about the results you can provide for them, not your products and services, the results of choosing you for those products and services. And these are things that you can do starting from scratch.

Anybody can do this. But if you're starting from scratch, you don't have that social proof. Now, the four things that want in your marketing, if you've heard me talk about this or read about it in some of my books, are images that show the results of hiring you. Text that talks about the results of hiring you, the social proof, which is people saying what you've done for them, and then the call to action. So three of the four you can still do, you can add that third one in that social proof in those short testimonials in as you get them. And the other thing is, I want you to use single sentences wherever you use those testimonials. Not just a whole paragraph. So if somebody does write you a nice long testimonial, you can pull a few different quotes out and use them in different pages on your website, use them in your social and then as you get more, you can, you know, feed in more people there.

So these are just a couple of ideas. It's always going to be a challenge, but you have to start somewhere. You know, what's the expression? When's the best time to plant a tree? 20 years ago? When's the second best time today? So work with what you have and then as you get more stuff, feed that in there as well and you'll start building the momentum just like everybody that's been established has done. They had to build the momentum as it went. That's what you need to do. But these are a few things that you can do. Thanks for listening and thanks for the suggestion.


I’m Alan Berg. Thanks for listening. If you have any questions about this or if you’d like to suggest other topics for “The Wedding Business Solutions Podcast” please let me know. My email is Alan@WeddingBusinessSolutions.com or you can  text, use the short form on this page, or call +1.732.422.6362, international 001 732 422 6362. I look forward to seeing you on the next episode. Thanks.

Listen to this and all episodes on Apple Podcast, YouTube or your favorite app/site:

©2025 Wedding Business Solutions LLC & AlanBerg.com


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Alan Berg, CSP, Global Speaking Fellow

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